A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Good. Electric cars are a completely unsustainable scam. It's absurd that people are being subsidized for their privileged and wasteful lifestyles. It's gross and it's completely unfair to people who actually want to reverse the climate catastrophe.
End car dependency, rebuild sustainable infrastructure, and give people credits for light EVs instead. For every electric car we could build like 1000 electric bikes. I could get a super nice e-bike for $7500.
Ban cars.
Build more mass transit in outlying areas, but also there are reasons for personal car ownership. My partner uses her personal car to do home health, for example. That is not possible with transit or on a bike. Plus it rains almost 9 months out of the year here, and good rain gear is spendy. I love e-bikes and transit, but electric cars have their place. There is not one solution.
Perfect is the enemy of good. There is no scenario where cars are getting banned in most of the world where EVs are being sold.
One thing I never see addressed with the dream of ending cars and just having bikes is how do first responders operate? How do you transport unconscious people to the hospital? Put out an apartment fire? Get to an armed robbery in time to stop it?
Bikes are great but they also aren't an end all be all solution to society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ&t=365
Oh look, emergency vehicles work even better on bike infrastructure than on car infrastructure
Bicylists and pedestrians can't hard block a firetruck the way car traffic can
No one wants to eliminate fire trucks and ambulances in favour of bikes.
When people talk about "ending cars" they're talking about private ownership of personal vehicles. It's not necessary to address first responders because that's not what anti-car people are talking about.
With an exception carved out for Tesla, I'm sure.
In the same vein, all the techbros who voted for Trump are gonna be real asshurt once immigration exemptions are made for tech workers
Like silicon valley is gonna be forced to pay market rate for American talent, pffh, c'mon now. Wages are like prices but the opposite. Prices always go up and never back down. Wages always come down and never go back up. Tech workers enshittification will commence at triple pace now
Musk actually has stated multiple times that he is all for abandoning the subsidies as his own margin is big enough to sustain prices but it will "destroy" his competition.
Jokes on Elon. Conservatives hate electric cars and now Tesla's core customer base hates Tesla because of Elon
Tesla supports removing the tax credit, because they don’t need the tax credit as much as their competitors.
Given our current education deficit, we’ve already had to import quite a bit of talent to keep up with being a first world country.
Example: when was the last time you encountered an Indian doctor?
Given the plans to make real/higher education accessible only to the wealthy, we’re going to need to import even more talent.
Yet they want a blanket ban, and once concentration camps are up and we're officially beyond the pale...and anything not that same shade of pale finds itself in those camps...I don't think people are gonna want to emigrate here or any of the five eyes.
Letting the bankers take the wheel in the 80s has cannibalized the health of all Western society and commodified whatever was left.
We were told to worship no one other than God/the source/the creator/the allfather/the universe/the truth/whatever you want to call it...but all I see is worship of another invisible diety, this invisible hand of the market - easily the most worshipped god in the modern day. Capitalism is incapable of bringing about salvation, unless you believe in accelerationism, and then everyone participating is gonna be found wanting.
Like, capitalism has failed to even create a society where it's own people want to breed in. Something so easy for us and we would rather throw it all away, myself included. For comparison, Mozart had 11 children. 2 survived into adulthood.
EV producers in the US are going to take a hit, whereas the ones in China and the EU would probably be fine.
Sounds like shooting itself in the foot.
Describe Trumps presidency in one sentence.
Sounds like shooting itself in the foot.
It's worse than that. Trump is a danger for the environment and climate. And the whole world will suffer consequence.
Shooting everyone in the foot?
Shooting everyone in the foot by shooting through your own foot first. Ma..ma...multikill.
Also wars, future pandemics, any kind of global cooperation that depends on the White House not being a madhouse, which is a lot.
Wanna bet if Tesla gets an exception?
No,but Musk has already stated that he actually wants that bonus gone because his own margin is high enough to keep the prices nearly the same while it will (quote) "destroy the remaining car industry".
Yes but you only get the subsidy if you buy Melania's book
Especially right after everyone began retooling factories to produce them and the rest of the world leaves us behind in development. America will be producing the Yugos of the 1980s in a few short years.
If memory serves me well, Yugos were made in former Yugoslavia and were known for being extremely cheap and dangerous for everyone in and around them. Am I correct?
But this makes me scratch my head.
American manufacturers exist in Europe today and regardless of not being a fan the cars sell, regardless the constant attempts to introduce pure US models, like the F series.
Ford may be the most widespread manufacturer but I've seen a few Dodge, Chevrolet (but GM officially pulled from the market after a 3 years run, stating it wasn't willing to remain in a market where a minimum 25% of market share wasn't attainable; competition sucks, apparently!), JEEP and Chrysler.
What is stopping these brands to import back the technology being used here, on their european models, back to the home country? It's already owned here!
I remember reading an article on a joint project between GM and FIAT to develop a new and shared platform. After X number of years and a gross amount of money invested, GM drops the project, FIAT finishes it and starts building an entire new generation of cars, still being built today.
Why put time, money and effort into a project to just drop it? Having a shared platform, capable of being used to assemble vehicles on both sides of the ocean makes sense.
German car makers are unfortunately dealing with the same issue since the incentives were cancelled.
No. They deal with the fact that they didn't start the technological race until it was too late (and haven't fully committed themselves even nowadays) and that they strongly build their sale strategy on the Chinese market - which nowadays is basically an EV market and one where German cars are now seen as either preposterous or "Grandfathers car".
This comes together with a price hike (not only on EVs but also across their fleet - starting long before EVs were common and affecting the combustion fleet as well; see the price of the Golf or Passat compared to an average worker wage over the last 20 years + it's resale value), a major lack of quality control since COVID and a lack of financial planning for this upcoming storm.
In other words: Their problem was not the end of the subsidies (which basically only affected the ID3 anyway as neither VW nor BMW or MB had any other models below the maximum price threshold for the subsidy) but their lack of management flexibility in time with a rapidly changing market.
Take him deeper Elon!
Oh god, please no. I need some mind's-eyebleach.
First lady is not going to be happy about it
Elon is not taking it deep enough
Apparently Tesla's on board with this. Their thinking, which I think is correct, is that the rebate benefits other manufacturers more since Tesla is much more established as an EV brand.
the problem is that they’re also one of the more expensive options. And they have a pretty bad reputation for quality now. So a 7,500 price increase is probably going to push people to look for higher quality at the 40 thousand price range, or for one of the cheaper options in the 30 thousand range. Assuming they don’t just go for a Prius instead.
Imo anyone considering a Tesla won't really care about the price and quality, for the reasons you describe. They're there for the brand.
Apple users
Yah, but musk has been doing some serious brand damage lately, so can they really keep selling on that?
Antidotal but as someone who bought a model 3 in 2018 and still likes the car, the next car a buy won't be a Tesla because I don't want to support or be associated with Elon.
Tesla, according to Musk,can keep the prices due to their insane margins. Musk actually wants these subsidies cut to destroy his competition.
I just don’t think his product will be competitive when the market moves up a whole price bracket, even if he thinks so.
People willing buy a 30,000$ new car are going to have more patience for poor quality than people who are willing to pay 40,000$. Like the market will shrink as some people are priced out, and those who remain will probably opt for something like an Ioniq-5, a Solterra, or a EX30 which are just nicer cars. Their main issues right now are a lack of availability, but that’s less of an issue as the market shrinks.